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<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>Theatre Review: ‘A Woman of No Importance’ at Irish Classical Theatre Company</p>
<p>nytheatreguide.com | February 4, 2014 by <a title="Marisa Caruso" href="http://nytheatreguide.com/author/marisacaruso/">Marisa Caruso</a></p>
<p>The wit of Oscar Wilde is his greatest legacy. The Victorian writer is known for at once embellishing and mocking the British aristocracy with the perfect turn of phrase. Devilish insincerity expressed through his signature dandy archetype leaves listeners amused and off-balance. The speakers never reveal what they truly believe, and so the audience is left unsure of what the author truly believes. A Woman of No Importance is a step beyond Wilde’s wit as it decidedly sides with the righteous in a story that deals with issues of more weight than muffins and fashion.</p>
<p>‘A Woman of No Importance’ is a delightful show that is unafraid of being earnest. It surprises and teaches and, of course, entertains.</p>
<p>The play begins as a regular assortment of London elites join together for dinner at the country home of Lady Hunstanton, played by Kelli Bocock-Natale. New to the company is the American visitor and friend of Lady Hunstanton, Miss Hester Worsley, played by Eliza Vann, whose puritanical views disagree with the superficiality of her British companions. Nevertheless, she gets along well enough with young Gerald Arbuthnot, played by Alan Trinca, who has been offered a respectable secretary position (despite humble upbringing) to the successful and most fashionable Lord Illingworth. Lord Illingworth, played by Vincent O’Neill, has made his reputation by “speaking to every woman as if he loved her and every man as if he were bored with him.” He is the dandy with a dark past, particularly disturbing to Mrs. Arbuthnot, Gerald’s mother, who implores him not to take the position. As the story unfolds, we see the consequences of the foolish mannered living that is so entertaining.</p>
<p>Perhaps the difference between this comedy and others by Wilde is its perseverance to serve its audiences more than mere entertainment. It risks what its aristocratic characters will not: sincerity, an honest opinion of morality’s place in the modern world.</p>
<p>Not that the light entertainment isn’t deliciously engaging. In fact, one of the strongest performances of the show comes from Kathleen Betsko Yale, who plays the disapproving matron Lady Caroline to perfection. Her scenes almost exclusively belong to the “light comedy” category but the gravity with which she speaks her lines lends them extraordinary power in Wilde’s mannered society. Yale’s performance certainly does the playwright proud. Outstanding also is the performance by Vincent O’Neill as the notorious Illingworth himself. Artistic director of the Irish Classical Theatre Company O’Neill uses his natural charm onstage to deleterious ends, an exciting and unsettling transformation to see. Eileen Dugan as Mrs. Arbuthnot wins us over with her good nature, and the dynamic between herself and O’Neill brings to life the quote: “Every puritan has a past, every criminal has a future.”</p>
<p>A Woman of No Importance is a delightful show that is unafraid of being earnest. It surprises and teaches and, of course, entertains.<br /> Running Time: Two hours with one 15-minute intermission.</p>
<p>About Marisa Caruso: Marisa Caruso lives in Buffalo where she finds passion in performing, viewing and, naturally, critiquing shows regularly. She is a recent graduate of the SUNY Fredonia theatre and arts administration departments.</p>
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<h3>Wilde's Women. Irish Classical does a superb job with merciless comedy</h3>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">By <a title="Email Colin Dabkowski" href="mailto:cdabkowski@buffnews.com">Colin Dabkowski</a> </span><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">| News Arts Critic <br /></span><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">January 22, 2014</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">The “Real Housewives” of Bravo have nothing on the women of Oscar Wilde’s merciless comedy “A Woman of No Importance,” who are now prowling and bumbling across the Andrews Theatre stage in a masterful Irish Classical Theatre Company production.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">Bravo’s “Housewives” franchise, as countless dutiful husbands and boyfriends have been forced to observe, offers a vapid and soulless sendup of vapid and soulless one-percenters with occasional doses of lukewarm comedy. Wilde, by contrast, delivers a withering and breathless deconstruction of aristocratic indifference and hypocrisy that makes the most vicious “Housewives” dispute look like a kindergarten slap-fight. Wilde’s women throw more shade in a single sentence than the Atlanta housewives do in an entire season.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">Of course, the well of literature about upper-class absurdity is practically inexhaustible, but there is something particularly satisfying about “A Woman of No Importance.” Wilde gets straight to the heart of the dramatic impulse among the aristocrats of late-Victorian London, which seems to arise as much from boredom as from cluelessness or cruelty. Left to their own devices, as Wilde constantly implied across his brief and wondrous career, monied men and women will amuse themselves by trying to destroy one another. And we will happily watch.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">The plot, as much as there is one, is a cheap framing device for a collection of irresistible – and irresistibly awful – characters. The first two we meet are the perpetually condescending Lady Caroline (Kathleen Betsko Yale), who as the play opens is looking down her nose at the young American Hester Worsley (Eliza Vann), Wilde’s wobbly stand-in for New World purity. Shortly we meet Lady Hunstanton (Kelli Bocock-Natale), a blathering and impossibly optimistic aristocrat with no moral compass who serves as the play’s comic center.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">Soon enough it comes to light that the unredeemable master of the house, Lord Illingworth (Vincent O’Neill, clearly reveling in the role), has hired a young lower-class man named Gerald (Alan Trinca) to be his secretary. As Gerald has no idea that the philandering Lord Illingworth is his father, this opens all sorts of dramatic potential, which Wilde shortly fills with perfectly calibrated bon mots and gloriously melodramatic speeches.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">Much criticism of the play has revolved around its relatively motionless first act, in which all that happens is a great deal of talking. Hogan and her cast solve this problem very wisely, by accentuating the absurdity of Wilde’s characters to a point that stops just millimeters short of caricature. To watch Bocock-Natale sputter half-remembered bits of wisdom as the good-spirited but clueless Lady Hunstanton and Yale deliver loaded words and glances as the curmudgeonly Lady Caroline is to see two comic masters at the top of their talent.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">Hogan’s decision to allow her actors to veer toward the cartoonish was a bold risk, but it is just restrained enough to give that supposedly troublesome first act the momentum of a David Mamet play. And that comic drive never stops, even as the play turns serious with certain revelations regarding Gerald and a heavy dose of dour dialogue from the dowdy Mrs. Arbuthnot (the fine Eileen Dugan).</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">Wilde gives many of the best lines to Mrs. Allonby, an upper-cruster and sort of Victorian version of reality TV star <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeNe_Leakes">NeNe Leakes</a>, who has the play’s best speech on the qualities that make an ideal husband. Which is to say: servitude and theatrical groveling.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">The impulses that drove Wilde to write the play are the same ones that drive viewers tune in to the “Real Housewives” franchise. As fans of either, we tell ourselves that we’re merely attracted to the absurdities of the impossibly rich, when in fact a major part of what makes us flip to Bravo or shell out $39 for a Wilde play is genuine, unalloyed envy.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">That is the dark and uncomfortable truth at the heart of all such literature, and it’s worth pondering. Wilde, with expert help from Hogan and her phenomenal cast, has given us a perfect opportunity to do so.</span></p>
<p><span lang="EN" xml:lang="EN">email: <a href="mailto:cdabkowski@buffnews.com">cdabkowski@buffnews.com</a></span></p>
<h3>A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE<br />BY ANTHONY CHASE</h3>
<p>Josephine Hogan’s production of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance is delightfully satisfying on so many levels. Her steady directorial hand has guided the company through Wilde’s epigram-packed script, from witticism to witticism, with an even pace, fueled by emotional suspense. Moreover, she has used the circular space of the Andrews Theatre, an insurmountable challenge for many a director, with fluidity and style, creating an ever-evolving range of stage pictures that heighten the drama within a handsome setting by David Dwyer.</p>
<p>The “woman” of the play’s title is Mrs. Arbuthnot, an unwed mother who has, by masquerading as a widow, managed to maintain her respectability and to raise her son, Gerald, in security and propriety, despite the repressive social dictates of the era. There never was, in fact, a Mr. Arbuthnot. Gerald’s birth was the result of his mother’s trust in a man who claimed to love her and promised to marry her, only to abandon her when she revealed her pregnancy.</p>
<p>The inciting incident of the story occurs before start of the play, when Gerald is offered a job as secretary to Lord Illingworth. The young man reveals this development with his entrance line in the very first scene; its import will only be revealed much later. Gerald is unaware that wealthy and powerful Illingworth is actually the father who abandoned him and his mother to an uncertain future.</p>
<p>Wilde artfully uses the first act to dazzle the audience with a dizzying flourish of his signature quips. With these, he creates an array of self-absorbed upper-class characters and builds a social world to contain them. In the second half of the play, these words will echo as self-condemnation, leading up to Mrs. Arbuthnot’s moral triumph.</p>
<p>It is often repeated that this is Wilde’s weakest play, but such an appraisal is entirely at odds with the marvelously clever script and its impressive performance history. The original 1893 production starring Herbert Beerbohm Tree was a triumph. George Bernard Shaw always considered the script to be superior to The Importance of Being Earnest. Indeed, condemnation of A Woman of No Importance only emerged subsequent to Wilde’s conviction and humiliation on a charge of “gross indecency.” Suddenly, similarities between the character of smarmy but clever Lord Illingworth and Wilde’s own flippant public persona became disturbing rather than entertaining. An American tour of the play was cancelled.</p>
<p>Herbert Beerbohm Tree remained devoted to the piece and played Lord Illingworth again after Wilde’s death. On this occasion, however, critic Lytton Strachey opined that Wilde had created an incestuous homosexual relationship in his portrayals of Gerald and Lord Illingworth. This assertion seems absurd today, but underscores the serious damage done to Wilde’s literary reputation.</p>
<p>Happily, Hogan’s production reveals this to be a powerful and finely crafted work, a play that holds our attention without flagging and that alternately inspires laughter and profound empathy.</p>
<p>The text of the play in no way supports Strachey’s creepy interpretation. On the contrary, as written, Lord Illingworth perceives the best of himself in a young man who turns out to be his own son. He attempts to advance the boy, but his past ill deeds and ongoing narcissism prevent him from ever benefitting from the joys of fatherhood.</p>
<p>Hogan has populated her production with a cadre of seasoned character actors who embody Wilde’s vivid characters with invention and energy. They perform alongside a cast of young up-and-comers who seem energized by proximity to such inspiring older colleagues.</p>
<p>Eileen Dugan is perfection as Mrs. Arbuthnot, creating a woman who is simultaneously worn down by social necessity and strengthened by maternal love. She provides the emotional core of the production and offers a deft and subtle performance, managing to evoke a real and affecting human being, and to remind us just why Bernard Shaw liked this purposeful comedy with its powerful social critique. (He would also admire Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, two years later.)</p>
<p>Shaw wrote Mrs. Warren’s Profession in the same year that Wilde wrote A Woman of No Importance, but Mrs. Warren, with its overt references to prostitution, was banned from production for the next 20 years. Tellingly, writing a supposedly immoral play in no way damaged Shaw’s career or reputation, but the exposure of Wilde’s homosexuality destroyed both, while diminishing respect for his dramatic work.</p>
<p>Others in Hogan’s production worthy of note include Kelli Bocock-Natale, whose performance as Lady Hunstanton is a veritable master class in comic precision and playfulness. In every gesture, inflection, and intention, this is arguably a perfect portrayal. Bocock-Natale nails Wilde’s comic rhythms and repetitions with such freshness and flawlessness that they seem to have been written just this morning and specifically for her. This is an astonishing comic performance.</p>
<p>Always a pleasure on stage, Kathleen Betsko Yale underplays socially inflexible but romantically insecure Lady Caroline with winning finesse. Her perpetual disapproval is delicious.</p>
<p>Among the gentlemen, Vincent O’Neill doesn’t waste a syllable of Lord Illingworth, assuredly one of Wilde’s greatest comic creations. When the character fails to win with charm, O’Neill pushes him toward the contemptible, making the ultimate failure of the man’s schemes all the more gratifying. The result is an entirely satisfying performance as one of Wilde’s most famous characters.</p>
<p>Also worthy of note is the performance of Alan Trinca as Gerald Arbuthnot. This relative newcomer projects an appealing stage presence as he sustains believable affection for Dugan’s Mrs. Arbuthnot and for young Eliza Vann’s Hester Worsley. In short, he convincingly creates a son of whom both parents can be proud and navigates the dramatically critical balancing act between his character’s conflicting desires for career advancement and love.</p>
<p>The setting has been moved from the late Victorian to the pre World War I era for this production, allowing costume designer Dixon Reynolds to make everyone look marvelous, while evoking character and class. The color and line of this production, from hem to hat, and from buckle to green carnation are as clever, humorous, and as thoughtful as the script itself.</p>
<p>The capable company also includes Gerry Maher as Sir John Pontefract, Chris Kelly as Mr. Kelvil, Doug Weyand as Archdeacon Daubeny, Geoff Pictor as Francis, Diane Curley as Lady Stutfield, Jenn Stafford as Mrs. Allonby, and Kelsey Mogensen as Alice. The production continues at the Andrews Theatre through February 9.</p>
<p>A Woman of No Importance Review<br />by Mike Keenan, What Travel Writers Say</p>
<p>Lord Illingworth: "What do you think she'd do if I kissed her?" (Hester Worsley)<br /> Mrs. Allonby: "Either marry you, or strike you across the face with her glove. What would you do if she struck you across the face with her glove?"<br /> Lord Illingworth: "Fall in love with her, probably." </p>
<p> Mocking the British upper crust and Victorian morality that abandoned women "in trouble" was like shooting fish in a barrel for gifted Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, whose derisive plays lampoon jaded Brit society and its decidedly 1% class distinctions. That gilded society doesn't alter much over the centuries, and so, Artistic Director and the play's prime actor, Vincent O'Neill's (Lord Illingworth) solid performance is just as relevant now with President Obama supposedly trying to address the needs of the 99% while old money and the nouveau riche control lackluster legislators. </p>
<p>The difficult aspect of staging this play in downtown Buffalo compared to the opulence of costume and set available in nearby Niagara on the Lake's Shaw Festival, is that director Josephine Hogan must make magic with theatre-in-the-round and the audience as background and a limited budget. Nonetheless, Dixon Reynolds' costumes are first-rate, and Hogan's large cast of 13 local actors is up to the task, although most see limited action. </p>
<p>In fact, Wilde's plays are always more about words and ideas than action, although O'Neill when he launches into his mischievous rhetoric at least stands up to deliver his biting quips to such as Lady Hunstanton (Kelli Bocock-Natale) who remains seated and confused, adept at offering humorous, diametrically opposed interpretations such as, "I remember, a clergyman who wanted to be a lunatic, or a lunatic who wanted to be a clergyman." The audience loved her foggy thinking as well as the nasty diatribes of her companion, Lady Caroline, perfectly portrayed by Kathleen Betsko Yale, festooned in black velvet (almost in mourning for her country), who lampoons for Alan Trinca's exceptional Gerald Arbuthnot, the ambitious bastard son of Illingworth and vengeful Mrs. Arbuthnot played exceedingly well by Eileen Dugan who smolders in the first act and explodes in the second, getting the last word and forever castigating Illingworth as "a man of no importance.</p>
<p>The plot has Worsley spend a weekend at an English country house party in the company of bored and boring nobility. Her love interest, Gerald, is offered a post to work for Lord Illingworth. When Gerald's mother Rachel arrives, the plot sizzles with scandal. As with last season's Shaw Festival's Lady Windermere's Fan, brilliantly director by Peter Hinton, the theme involves aristocratic secrets and gender politics. This play opened in 1893, was performed in New York and about to tour when Wilde was arrested and charged with sodomy following his public row with the Marquess of Queensbury over the Marquess' son, Lord Alfred Douglas . The tour was cancelled. </p>
<p>ICTC co-founder and Artistic Director, Vincent O'Neill is superb as Lord Illingworth, an aging bachelor - clever and coy, Mrs. Arbuthnot's (Eileen Dugan) former lover (discarded) and father of Gerald. Mrs. Allonby (Jenn Stafford) reveals similar disarming qualities with snake-like venom, and the two engage in repartee. Illingworth offers Gerald the post of private secretary and thus sets in motion a conflicting series of events.</p>
<p>Mrs. Arbuthnot is portrayed as a respectable widow and churchgoer who performs good work amongst the poor while naïve Gerald accept society uncritically, his black and white belief in honour and duty causing him to insist upon his parents' marriage. Flirtatious Mrs. Allonby dares Illingworth to "kiss the Puritan," orphan and heiress, Hester Worsley (Eliza Vann) an outsider to British society. Lady Caroline Pontefract (Kathleen Betsko Yale) bullies Mr. Kelvil (Chris Kelly) whom she incorrectly constantly refers to as "Mr. Kettle." As an M.P., Kelvil wants to improve society, but lacks the personality to succeed, while Lady Stutfield (Diane Curley) tritely intones "Quite, Quite." Archdeacon Daubeny (Doug Weyand) plays a similarly slight role often slapping his hands in glee. </p>
<p>A Woman of No Importance focuses on the differences between men and women and, more importantly, the way in which Victorian society mistreated its ladies. As with Lady Windermere's Fan, Wilde attacks the injustice of a society that condemns a "fallen" woman while offering respite to the male who caused her downfall.</p>
<p>During the play, Lord Illingworth and Mrs. Allonby share this humorous riposte: "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy," "No man does. That is his." Want more Wilde? <br /><a href="http://www.whattravelwriterssay.com/perfarts100.html">Click here for some other of the many bon mots in the play</a>.</p>
<p>“A Woman of No Importance” By Oscar Wilde<br /> - at Irish Classical Theatre<br /> By Willy Rogue Donaldson</p>
<p> Aha! An English Drawing Room Play. Of a particular kind though, it’s by Oscar Wilde, so wit is woven with outrageous ideas. And yet if you look beneath your rush seat, you’ll spy the sturdy floor of a conventional play, virtue winning in the end. </p>
<p>But not before a passel of interesting characters strut and situate in the drawing room of the country estate of Lady Hunstanton. Most of the guests are already in the house. Lady Caroline is early to the room with her fourth husband, Sir John Pontefract. She seems to marry just to henpeck, and she does a thorough job of it, at least until Sir John can sneak away. And we have the young, rich and pretty American visitor, Miss Hester Worsley, whom Lady Caroline finds worthy of pecking. And here enters our Hostess, Lady Hunstanton, splendid in a blue dress. And here comes Lady Stutfield and Mr. Kelvil and Gerald Arbuthnot.</p>
<p>Gerald approaches Mrs. Hunstanton with his good news, he has been hired as an assistant by Lord Illingworth, an event which greatly improves his prospects. She is quite pleased, also. His mother, Mrs. Arbuthnot, won’t be able to come until after dinner.</p>
<p>Francis the Footman announces the arrival of Archdeacon Daubeny. And finally we have Lord Illingworth making a notable entrance, Mrs. Allbony on his arm.</p>
<p>And now the one-liners this play and Oscar Wilde are famous for increase. Most of them uttered by Lord Illingworth, whose views contradict most of the others, but are confidently spoken. Lady Hunstanton tries to respond to them but can’t quite grasp his meaning, which as she says is just as well, because she might disapprove if she understood them. The audience is laughing at all this; as a Lord, he gets away with a lot, everything is shockingly amusing or too quick to beplucked apart.</p>
<p>After dinner, the ladies retire back to the withdrawing room and chat. Mrs. Arbuthnot arrives and is welcomed by Lady Hunstanton as an old friend. Eventually the men join them, coughing after their cigars and whatnot. Lord Illingworth is verbally sparring with Mrs. Allonby, a possible future conquest, and is introduced to Mrs. Arbuthnot. Mrs. Allonby asks who she could be, he says “She’s a woman of no importance,” as the scene ends. For the rest of the events, shocks, conniving and developments, you’ll have to go see the play.</p>
<p>The acting is fine, the set functions well and the costumes are well done, particularly the blue gown on Mrs. Hunstanton and the middle class suit on Gerald Arbuthnot. Those and the rest of the finery by Costume Designer Dixon Reynolds. Chris Kelly was the Hair and Make-up Designer, and he made the important distinction between the elaborate coifs of most of the women and the plain hairdo on Mrs. Arbuthnot. It made her near a puritan, and kept the hair off her face so it could be seen at most angles onstage.</p>
<p>My companion, Miss Chartreuse, liked the character of Lady Caroline the best. She was played by Kathleen Betsko Yale, who had the best vinegar lines. Lady Hunstanton was played graciously and quietly emphatically by Kelli Bocock-Natale. Mrs. Arbuthnot was acted by Eileen Dugan as sad, wiser, religious but sure in her claim of her son and the decisions she was asked to make later.</p>
<p>Eliza Vann played Miss Hester Worsley confidently honing in on her man. Archdeacon Daubeny was played by Doug Weyand as a wise deceiver; one wonders if he deceived himself. Mrs. Allonby was played by Jenn Stafford, an assured wit. The other younger woman, Lady Stutfield, was played by Diane Curley as a contrast to Allonby, a little dense. Alice, the maid, was too pretty to have been hired by a shrewd Mistress. Lady Caroline would consider such beauty a danger in the household. And watching her husband Sir John, played by Gerry Maher, she would be right. Maher played Sir John meek but mobile, quietly scooting to where the beauties were when his wife wasn’t watching.</p>
<p>Mr. Kelvil was played by Chris Kelly with appropriate stiffness. And Gerald Arbuthnot was played with an earnest heart by Alan Trinca. And sailing over all, at least in the First Act, was Vincent O’Neill, stretching his grandness over himself like an invisible canvas. Later he had to mutter over the shoals, but he was always interesting. Another great performance.</p>
<p>All the acting was improved by the good posture of the actors. The times required good posture from the nabobs, a slight head tilt up would give importance to any character, as shown by Geoff Pictor who played the Footman Francis, setting the tone for the house. The middle class could be a little slumped if they wanted, and nobody paid any attention to the lower class.</p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">The last sound you hear in the play is a single note from a piano. It is most eloquent, and effects the reversal of tone so appropriate for a Wilde play, also strengthens the ending. Kudos to Sound Designer Tom Makar and Director Josephine Hogan. Standing Ovation, the audience loved it.<br /> <span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 10pt;"><strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /> <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></strong></span><span class="heading2">A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE Andrews Theatre/Irish Classical Theatre Company</span><br /><span class="heading2"> by Augustine Warner, Speakupwny.com</span><br /><span class="heading2"> Jan 21, 2014, 12:37</span></p>
<p>Through February 9 A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE Andrews Theatre/Irish Classical Theatre Company</p>
<p> Oscar Wilde’s “A Woman of No Importance” is a battle of bon mots, classic line followed by classic line looking at the British Upper Crust in late Victorian times. It’s also something of a morality play in reward and punishment and perceived views. Or, “The Book of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden” responding…”It ends with Revelations.” It’s a weekend house party in Hunstanton Chase, somewhere in rural England and far from civilization. Instead, it’s the nobles at play.</p>
<p>They are at play in the dictionary, at play in the field of morals, at play in the dark corners of the estate and potentially at play in the bedroom. It’s also the old and blue blood at play, with a rich young American woman (Eliza Vann) exploring the aristocracy. Those rich American women were needed by the nobility because they were cash poor although title rich and land rich, dealing with time, taxes and financial ignorance. Stupidity, general ignorance, racism and sloth were much-prized qualities in the aristocracy and nobility, since they didn’t work, relying on the common people to work and their “men of business” to keep the quid rolling in to support this lifestyle.</p>
<p>Certainly that’s the portrait painted by Oscar Wilde in “A Woman of,” a selection of dim men and women who are cruel to young Gerald Arbuthnot (Alan Trinca) who has just agreed to quit an underpaid bank job for a post as secretary to Lord Illingworth (Vincent O’Neill), a vapid and lecherous noble, reminiscent of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” He also walks into a crowd of aristocratic behavior and stupidity, especially a wonderful performance from Kelli Bocock-Natale as Lady Hunstanton, dim and talkative. Probably each character is based on someone Wilde knew and didn’t like. That includes the over-impressed with himself Mr. Kelvil (Chris Kelly), member of Parliament, the predatory Mrs. Allonby (Jenn Stafford) who has left her husband behind for the weekend party and Sir John Pontefract (Gerry Maher) who is constantly dodging being around his wife, Lady Caroline (Kathleen Betsko Yale).</p>
<p>Then, there is the predatory Lord Illingworth, ready to cut a swath through the female population of the house. There is a problem for him, revolving around the discovery of who is “A Woman of No Importance.” The former George Hartford has led a rake’s life and it has caught up with him, in the person of Mrs. Abuthnot (Eileen Dugan), Gerald’s mother. That’s where the words and humor and Wilde’s social criticism all coalesce.</p>
<p>While the story becomes clear fairly early on, I will leave it to the writer and the performers to tell the tale and issue its warnings of the perils of youth and stupidity. Josephine Hogan doesn’t direct very often at the Irish Classical but she knows how to use the Andrews’ unusual design, although the cast members may swirl around more than they have to. There’s a nice touch with the flamboyant tossing of coat tails by the formally dressed Upper Crust men. Dugan, Bocock-Natale and O’Neill are wonderful, while Stafford doesn’t seem to have the grip on the role and the accent of the part. David Dwyer’s set works well in the theater.</p>
<p>Once you work through some of the accents, “A Woman of No Importance” is a really interesting play with some fine performances.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-date2 field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="">January 23, 2014</div></div></div><span property="dc:title" content="New York Theatre Guide Review and more!" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Mon, 20 Jan 2014 17:20:21 +0000ictadmin97 at http://irishclassical.com"A Life" gets 4 Stars (out of 4)!http://irishclassical.com/life-gets-4-stars-out-4
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>by Ted Hadley<br />The Buffalo News, Contributing Reviewer</p>
<p>Irish playwright John Keyes Byrne wrote under the nom de plume Hugh Leonard, but to family, friends and a select group of foes answered to plain old “Jack.”</p>
<p>He died in 2009 at age 82 and left an astounding legacy: four dozen plays, screenplays, teleplays, lauded adaptations of the classics and hundreds of unpredictable but mostly acerbic, gleefully malicious newspaper columns attacking literati or others deemed worthy of his scorn.</p>
<p>Ironically, America knows Hugh Leonard as a kinder, gentler writer of two stage works in particular, the award-winning memory play, “Da,” and its thoughtful, rueful sequel of sorts, “A Life.” “Da” has been produced twice by Buffalo’s Irish Classical Theatre Company with great success, most recently a year ago. “A Life,” infrequently performed but thankfully remembered by the ICTC for its season finale, just opened at the company’s Andrews Theatre home, there to stay until the end of June.</p>
<p>A minor character from “Da,” Desmond Drumm, returns and is central in “A Life.” A 40-year civil servant, Drumm is a terminal crank, a dedicated, demanding workaholic who does not suffer fools and has just been promoted to “Keeper of Records” for the Irish coastal town of Dalkey. Desmond sometimes serves as a docent for walking tours of Dalkey and spices his talk with sarcasm and biting tidbits about the locals. “Dalkey has about 600 persons per public house,” he informs, then regularly launches into barbs pointed at Dublin suburbanites. Drumm, to put it mildly, is not a people person.</p>
<p>Then, a life-changer. Desmond has had “tummy trouble” and tests prove the worst: six months to live, at best. Curmudgeon Drumm begins to take stock of his life, put things in order. “I need to know what I amount to,” he says. “Debit or credit. That much I’m owed.” He tells one person about his future: long-ago love Mary. Dolly, Drumm’s wife, is kept in the dark. Reverie soon takes over this bittersweet “A Life.” The story alternates a succession of scenes between young, 20-something Drumm – even then stodgy, joyless and steel-willed – and his small circle of friends with the same group four decades later. We learn where grudges began and festered, when slights occurred and words hurt, about Drumm’s deeds of commission or omission, how the four lives flourished or floundered. Secrets are disclosed and blame is in ample supply.</p>
<p>At story’s end, Desmond Drumm has learned some life lessons. Better late...</p>
<p>In Hugh Leonard’s writing and Fortunato Pezzimenti’s direction, sentiment never appears and never once are we called upon to judge. Fine traits. Pezzimenti has assembled another flawless ensemble. These things add up to a season-ending gem.</p>
<p>Vincent O’Neill is a remarkable Drumm, unlikable but certainly not evil, cantankerous even in his attempts to salvage “a life” – his. A perfect portrayal. O’Neill is joined by the stellar Josephine Hogan, Gerry Maher and Colleen Gaughan. The younger versions of “Dezzie,” Dorothy, Mibs and Lars are played by Joe Liolos, Jamie Nablo-Lama, Genevieve Lerner and expatriate Patrick G. McGee. Liolos and Lerner are exceptional here. ICTC’s technical wizards have brought their A-game. Ann Emo’s costumes shine.</p>
<hr /><p>"A Life" By Hugh Leonard<br />At Irish Classical Theater Co.<br />Review by Willy Rogue Donaldson</p>
<p>Here we are back in Ireland for a sequel to Leonard’s play “Da”. This play follows the life of one character, Desmond, from young love to retirement, in a rich environment of his town of Dalkey. One quartet of players play the men and women in early adulthood, another quartet plays the same characters in the late afternoon of life. Sometimes they are both onstage together, as Leonard fills in what has happened and why the old characters are entwined the way they are. </p>
<p>We learn that Desmond’s father used to beat him mercilessly if he made any mistakes or omissions in his studies. His father has died before the play opens, but the young man is marked by it. It has made him quite pedantic and socially hesitant. As Desmond (later Drumm), he courts a young maiden of the town, named Mibs (later Mary). He is attracted to her liveliness and intelligence and doesn’t understand why she would be at all attracted to the lively but not so bright Lar (later Kearns). Lar courts her seriously, and she waits to see if Desmond will project his love to the next step, a proposal. He who hesitates has lost, he hesitates and he loses. Mibs accepts Lar’s hand in marriage. Meanwhile, another woman, Dorothy (later Dolly), finds Desmond inspiring in his political speeches and follows him around town. Desmond mostly ignores her, but he ends up marrying her, perhaps because she’s available and part of their little group.</p>
<p>Forty years later and Drumm is walking in the park. He is a school teacher approaching retirement, and has just been to the doctor, he’s got a problem. His wife comes along but he’s not interested in talking to her, he sends her on home and he goes to visit Mary. He hasn’t seen her in six years, we don’t the reason, but he is still in love with her and she’s the one he wants to talk to. She lets him in a little reluctantly, they have still been lovers all along altho we don’t know how physical it has been. He tells her he has been to the doctor, just before his retirement. Later he tells her that he only has six months to live. Her husband Kearns enters and is delighted to see Drumm, starts talking about all their friends who have died. Drumm asks about their son Sean, not a good topic, Sean is up to Dublin and doesn’t talk to Kearns much. When Kearns is out of the room, Mary tells Drumm he turned their son Sean agains Kearns, Drumm took him under his wing and taught him a lot, Sean thinks his father Kearns is a bit of a bumpkin. We wonder if Sean is actually the son of Mary and Drumm.</p>
<p>Dolly comes along and admires their decorating, she takes tea and they all socialize a bit. Then Drumm and Dolly head home, Dolly carefully lets Drumm know that Mary has told her that Drumm has had a crush on her, Dolly says she thinks she’s just jealous of her, but that if that was true, it could all change with retirement, they could sort of start over.</p>
<p>Drumm asks her if she would rather he give her a car or he finish a scholarly book. Dolly answers car. We think he has just proved her selfish, but then she hoists him on his petard by saying that she said that because she knows he always does the opposite of what she says. He sends her on home, he wants to walk a bit by himself.</p>
<p>All his life Drumm had pitied people for their emotional weakness, he thought cogito ergo sum and that cogitation was prime, now he realizes that his intellectual life has given him no satisfaction and gives no solace as his life quickly approaches its end, his immanent retirement to be cut short by his illness. He realizes the important part of life is love and emotions, and he has lost out on these. Dolly’s offer of late love doesn’t interest him, he doesn’t love her. The one person he loved was Mary, he didn’t act upon it in time and lost her. There’s another quote that he tries to teach Mary in the early part of the play which comes around again later, I’ll let you ponder that one.</p>
<p>Fortunato Pezzimenti has directed a clear and fine production, and it is a strong cast and the production’s characters spring to life. Genevieve Lerner plays Mibs with panache, it helps that both the men are after her. Colleen Gaughan plays Dolly with a chirpy cheeriness covering her sadness as she is put down or ignored by her husband Drumm. And Drumm is more interesting than he is written because he is played by Vincent O’Neill. Without O’Neill’s energy and confidence, Drumm might be just a rather unfortunate character. Drumm realizes his hollowness, O’Neil makes him still interesting.</p>
<p>Review by Willy Rogue Donaldson<br />Copyright 2013 all rights reserved<br />Except first printing in Night-Life Magazine in June 013<br />716.886.2472<br /><a href="mailto:aabzwd@gmail.com">aabzwd@gmail.com</a></p>
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